Apologetics – Page 65

Is Thomistic Natural Law … Legitimate? Part II

Romans 2:14-16

14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) 16 in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.

This text is probably the main text that is seized upon by Natural Law theorists to justify the Natural law project. I hope to show in what follows that the text does not support the whole Natural Law project. The reason that I am pursuing this here is due to the fact that among some Reformed Churches, Jesuit trained scholars are seeking to revive the Natural Law tradition within the Reformed Church. One would have thought that given the thorough thrashing that the presuppositionalists in the 20th century gave to Natural theology and by extension Natural Law that this would be a battle that would not need to be fought again but alas memories are even shorter than lifespans.

From the passage above the Natural Law theorist posit three truths about the text that just are not so.

1.) Natural Law theorists are convinced that the text is a universal given for all men

2.) The word Law in vs. 15 is a reference to Natural Law or Laws found in nature.

3.) The Natural Law(s) are written in the hearts of all men

The background of this passage finds the Apostle making the case that fallen men will not be able to use the excuse of a lack of revelation for their insistence that they do not know God. This is due to the reason that the Gentiles have suppressed the truth of God’s revelation in unrighteousness and chose to worship the creation over the Creator.

The basis of God’s condemnation of the wicked is that they are ungodly and unrighteous, having inherited original sin and they are condemned having been imputed with the sin of Adam. The refusal to receive the message of General Revelation which teaches that there is a God and that man is condemned only ratifies the condemnation that fallen man is born under and with.

Some of these that come under God’s condemnation are those who have never heard of God’s Law (Torah). Yet, even these are condemned for;

all who have sinned without the Torah will also perish without the Torah; and all who who have sinned under the Torah will be judged by the Torah. (Romans 2:12)

It is important to point out here that the “Torah” (Law) mentioned here is not reducible to the Decalogue. The Torah includes all of the Law in all of its detail that God gave to Israel. John Murray could comment on this text by offering,

“The law referred to is definite and can be none other than the law of God specified in the preceding verses as the laws which the Gentiles do not have, the law the Jews did have and under which they were, the law by which men will be condemned in the day of judgment.”

This is important to note because our Natural Law friends want to reduce the Law in Romans 2 to the Decalogue and they want to contend that the Gentiles did have the Law being referred to here if only as given by a different delivery system (Natural Law). The Law that the Apostle refers to here is a law that governed how one’s hair was cut, how one’s crops were planted, how sin was to be punished, etc. It was the whole Torah system. To assume that the law that is referred to in Romans 2 is only the Ten Commandments is to import something to the text that is not there. Clearly it is easier to make a case that Natural Law communicates that Murder is wrong. It is more difficult to contend that Natural Law teaches that if an animal gores and kills somebody it must be stoned. By reducing what the Torah is in Romans 2 the Natural Law aficionado makes it easier to successfully make his case.

Paul in Romans 2:14 emphatically states that some Gentiles do not have the Torah to guide them. It is important that we realize that there is no definite article in the Greek before the word “Gentiles.” This is significant because the Natural Law guys who learned from their Jesuit mentors assume, contrary to the text, that all Gentiles do have the Torah but from a different source – to wit, from Nature as read by autonomous reason.

You can imagine a bit of a conversation that might develop between a Roman Catholic Thomistic defender of Natural Law and the Presuppositionalist who reads the Scripture,

Presuppositionalist: A “Gentile” by definition is someone who does not have the Torah to guide him in all of life.

Thomist: No! The Gentiles do have Torah. They just get it from Nature, not Revelation.

Presuppositionalist: NO! Paul states twice in Romans 2:14 that Gentiles do not have the Torah. He is not saying that they have a Torah-without-God through a Nature-without-God. In Romans 2:12, Paul states that those who sin without Torah will perish without Torah. If they have the Torah, even through a Nature-without-God how can he say that Gentiles sin and perish without it?

The Apostle is stating that the “conscience” in the Gentile heathen takes the place of the Torah by sitting in judgment of what He thinks and says and does. This is key for it is this conscience that is the “work of the law written on the heart.” The work of the law is to adjudicate between right and wrong. It is the heathen Gentiles conscience that is doing that work. It is thus not the Law (Torah) that is written on the Gentile heart but the work of the Law as accomplished by the conscience that is written on the Gentile’s heart. Instead of the Torah the pagan has conscience. Meyer points out,

“their moral nature, with its voice of conscience commanding and forbidding, supplies to their own Ego the place the revealed law possessed by the Jews.”

Robert Haldane chimes in,

“We have here a distinction between the law itself, and the work of the law. the work of the law is the thing that that the law doeth, – that is, what it teaches about actions, as good or bad. This work, or business, or office of the law, is to teach what is right or wrong.”

A proper understanding of Romans 2:14-16 requires us to distinguish between what the text says (the work of the law written on their hearts) and what is passed off as the text saying (the law written on their hearts).

This error of rearranging the text is seen by reputed scholars like David VanDrunen

“God has inscribed the natural law on the hearts of every person (Romans 2:14-15), and all people know the basic requirements of God’s law, even if they suppress that knowledge (Rom. 1:19, 21, 32).”

Michael Horton has likewise made this common error,

“Gentiles have the moral law indelibly written on their conscience (Rom. 2:15). Not only do they know the second table (duties to neighbors); they know the first table as well (duties to God).”

These incidents could be many times repeated by many Thomistic authors and in this habit we see theologians not only deleting the words “the work of” but adding the words “on the hearts of all men.”

The problem here is that Paul did not say that, “the law was written on the hearts of all men.” Indeed, given the context of Romans 2 Paul most assuredly does not have in view all men but only those Gentile pagans who do not have the written Torah. If our Natural law lovers were consistent with their misreading of the text they would have to admit that Jews do not have Natural Law because they have Torah.

Lenski explains,

“Jews cannot be included, for they are under the Mosaic code. The Greeks are also excluded … because the Greek is a pagan he is not necessarily included … Also those who sin and perish ‘without any law’ (vs. 12) are excluded… This interpretation will not be accepted by those who think that all Gentiles are here referred to. But Paul had looked around in this wicked world a bit. It still contains men who have no conscience at all, who in no way respond even to an inner law … Yes, ethne (Greek for Gentile) without the article is correct.”

So clearly the interpretation of Natural Law advocates is inaccurate here. The passage does not support the interpolation that “the law is written on the hearts of all men.” The Holy Spirit is not speaking universally of all mankind. Natural law theorizing fails on this account.

Now add to this that the word “Gentiles” does not have the definite article in Romans 2:14 because not only is Paul not making a universal statement about all mankind, he is also not even making a universal statement about all Gentiles. Some Gentiles of course had heard of Torah and thus those Gentiles who had heard of Torah cannot be grouped with the Gentiles who had not heard of Torah. John Murray offers on this score,

… there are some Gentiles who did have the law and on that account did not belong to the category of which he (Paul) is speaking.”

H. A. W. Meyer reinforce Murray’s observation by offering that what Paul was saying must,

“not be understood of the Gentiles collectively … for this must have been expressed by the (definite) article … and the putting of the case otan … poin with respect to the heathen generally would be in itself untrue – but Paul means rather Gentiles among whom the supposed case concerns.”

The next observation that seriously mitigates against the Natural law case is the reality that in Romans 2:15 the Greek verb for “work” and the Greek verb for “written” agree (accusative neuter singular). The case, gender, and number of the two words grammatically mean that the “work” of the Torah is what is “written” in the hearts of the Gentiles who do not have the Torah. This bolsters the case that is being made that it is not the case that the Torah itself is written on the heart. What the Apostle is referring to here is something else that is in the hearts of the heathen that functions in the place of Torah.

Next, in order to overturn Natural law eisegesis of Romans 2:14-16 we turn to the meaning of the phrase, “the law” in the text. In the context of the passage the meaning can only be a reference to the revealed Torah that the Jews possessed. The attempt by Natural Law theologians to interpret “the law” in Romans 2:14-16 as some kind of ethereal nebulous Natural law is just laughable and violates basic hermeneutics 101. John Murray again reinforces the point that we are laboring at here by saying,

“Paul does not say that the law is written upon their (Gentiles) hearts.”

Now I will seek to set forth what Paul is getting at with the idea that the “work of the law written in their hearts”

CONSCIENCE

This “work of the law written in their hearts” The Apostle suggests is the conscience.

15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)

It is the conscience that does the work that the Torah does for those who do not have Torah. For those who have Torah, the work of Torah is to determine what is acceptable and what is not. For those who do not have Torah, the work of Torah written in the heart is the work of the conscience determining what is acceptable and what is not.

Matthew Henry in his commentary offers in support of this

“They had the work of the law. He (Paul) does not mean that work which the law commands, as if they could produce a perfect obedience; but that work which the law does.”

Hendrickson & Kistemaker in their commentary offers,

“It is that individual’s inner sense of right and wrong; his (to a certain extent divinely imparted) moral consciousness viewed in the act of pronouncing judgment upon himself, that is, upon his thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds, whether past, present, or contemplated. As the passage states, the resulting thoughts or judgments are either condemnatory or, in certain instances even commendatory.”

And just one more … this from a chap named Mounce in his commentary on Romans

“Paul was not saying that God’s specific revelation to Israel through Moses was intuitively known by pagan peoples. He was saying that in a broad sense what was expected of all peoples was not hidden from those who did not have the revelation given to Israel. Their own conscience acknowledged the existence of such a law. Thrall suggests that Paul was saying that in the pagan world the conscience performed roughly the same function as the law preformed in the Jewish world.”

Now as we consider the Biblical concept of conscience closer we learn that like all words the meaning of this word depends upon which worldview matrix that we drop it in.

Brief Explanatory Story – The meaning of the word “Cool.”

Conscience is one of those words that has been made to carry a great deal of foreign freight. In the philosophy of Stoicism “conscience” was made to mean the place where resides the infallible “sense of oughtness” resident in human nature.

The Biblical concept of conscience is different from the pagan notion of Stoicism.

Interestingly enough the Hebrew OT never refers to the “conscience.” There isn’t even a Hebrew word for it, though there are times where the KJV will translate the Hebrew word “Heart” as “conscience” but this is an example where people were interpreting instead of translating. No one who had the Law ever appealed to “conscience” as an inner judge for right and wrong. It was the Torah that served as judge for right and wrong. Since Jews had the Torah they did not need a conscience.

When we come to the NT, the word “conscience” does not appear in the Gospels and is never referenced by Jesus or His disciples. In the Epistles the Greek word we use for “conscience” can simply mean to be sincere in what one says and does.

Romans 9:1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit,

Barclay and Nida in their commentary on Romans point out

“conscience may be variously translated depending upon the particular set of associations connected w/ certain terms or phrases – for example, “my heart,” “my innermost,” “that which speaks within me,” or “the voice of my heart.”

The conscience does not have any ontological reality. It seems often to serve as a kind of “Deus ex machina” to communicate the source of ones convictions.

Vincent’s word studies give us insight into the meaning of conscience

“In Scripture we are to view the conscience as Bishop Ellicott remarks, not in its abstract nature, but in its practical manifestations. Hence it may be weak (I Cor. 8:7, 12), unauthoritative and awakening only the feeblest emotion. It may be evil or defiled (Heb. 10:22, Tit. 1:15), through consciousness of evil practice. It may be seared (I Tim. 4:2), branded by its own testimony to evil practice, hardened and insensible to the appeal of good. OTOH, it may be pure (II Tim. 1:3), unveiled, and giving honest and clear testimony. It may be void of offense (Acts 24:16), unconscious of evil intent or act: good as here, or honorable (Heb. 13:18). the expression and the idea, in the full Christian sense, are foreign to the OT, where the testimony to the character of moral action and character is born by external revelation rather than by the inward moral consciousness.”

So we see that those who teach that conscience is the place in human nature where there resides the infallible “sense of oughtness” are those who are teaching the meaning according to the ancient pagan philosophy of stoicism and not Christianity.

REGENERATION

As we seek to wrest Romans 2 away from those who teach, by way of pagan Natural Law theories, that God’s Law is written on the hearts of all men, we would point to the idea of the work of Regeneration.

In all other references in Scripture to the law being written in the heart what we find is a reference to the work of regeneration.

Jer. 31:33″But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, ” I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

It would be odd if in Romans 2 Paul began to use the language of the promise of the New Covenant to teach that the pagans – those who were strangers and aliens to the covenant – had written on their heart that law written on the heart which was to be the blessing of the new covenant.

So, to say, as the Natural Law theologians are want to say that all men of the law written in their hearts is to take what was to be the privileged blessing of the new covenant people and extend it indiscriminately to regenerate and unregenerate alike. I would say the position of Natural Law advocates proves to much.

Based on what has been teased out in these two message on Natural law, I must conclude that Romans 2:15 does not teach Natural law as it is commonly taught by many in the Reformed camp.

Andrew Sandlin & the Sey Marriage… Splashes Insults Everywhere

“Samuel Sey is a godly young Christian leader, and it’s tragically no surprise that his marriage to a faithful Christian woman has provoked opposition among the racists within “The New Right.” This reflects the growing re-paganization of a conservatism that has lost its tether to Christian culture. Opposition to interracial marriage is a tribalist, pagan idea. It’s inter- marriage the Bible opposes.”

Andrew Sandlin

Facebook Post

1.) Given the fact that Samuel Sey himself has insisted that he is NOT in inter-racial marriage I don’t why Sandlin is defending their non inter-racial marriage by referring to the Sey marriage as a “inter-racial” marriage.

2.) Is it “racist” for someone to observe that inter-racial marriages are not wise and so oppose inter-racial marriages since they;

a.) Have a higher rate of divorce

b.) produce children who will have split identities

c.) produce children who will have a more difficult time finding donor matches should they have medical problems

d.) do not find or provide support for the particular ethnic community that of which they will be a “part.” (See linked article)

3.) Actually it is Sandlin who is reflecting a growing paganization of a heretofore conservative ethos. The paganism that Sandlin is reflecting is Cultural Marxism and it reflects how Sandlin has lost his tether to millennium of Christian Culture as exhaustively demonstrated in Achord & Dow’s book, “Who is My Neighbor.”

Have I mentioned recently that everyone keeps ignoring that anthology and that to date nobody has answered this volume that clearly demonstrates that the Church Fathers throughout the centuries would have thought that Andrew Sandlin was a certifiable lunatic for advancing his position on inter-racial marriage.

4.) Support for inter-racial marriage is a New World Order pagan idea and Sandlin should be ashamed for giving it his full throated support.

5.) The Bible supports neither inter-racial marriages nor inter-religious marriage.

Andrew really should give this a read for proof that the Bible does not support inter-racial marriages;

https://thereformedconservative.org/ai_story_collection/on-natural-communities/?fbclid=IwAR3Xj8e1sGQg_mIEutESrPcM3QxaX7CGBy9LX1vwh_VJ7ku5J6n1sNycjRE

6.) Let me make it clear that I have no reason to doubt that Mr. & Mrs. Sey are fine Christian people. (Indeed, as of this moment I have more confidence that they are Christian people than I am convinced that Dr. Andy Sandlin is a Christian person.) Further, I am convinced that now that the Sey marriage has been contracted Christians should do all they can to support this unwise move on their part. What God has joined together let no man cast asunder.

However, at the same time Christian ministers should be working overtime to explain to their young people why this kind of inter-racial marriage is less than a good idea.

The Subtle Shift That Occurred Between Classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism

Classical Marxists believed that man was Homo Economicus. As such the Classical Marxists understood if man was to be changed, that is, if man was to be a different product than what he was what had to be changed was the Economic pool in which man was swimming. Change the economic swimming pool environment and you will change the man. Man, the Classical Marxists thought, was a economic being and so the Classical Marxists brought their big guns out to attack class, property, ownership, means of production, capital, and capitalism. However, the goal of all that was to produce the new Soviet (Marxist) man. The means was economics but the goal was always to liberate and so change man so that he was no longer in bondage to his Feudal Overlords thus becoming the new Utopian man. Change the Economics and one changes the man.

With the rise of WW I it was seen by some Marxists that this model of change was a failure. WW I announced this failure because the workers of the world did not unite and instead the proletariat from the different nations fought against their other proletariat brothers from other nations. Some of the Marxists learned via the experience of WW I that the proletariat had a higher loyalty to country than their loyalty to class categories. Shortly thereafter some of the Marxists learned that Classical Marxism was not going to gain traction in the victorious Western nations of WW I because the proletariat worker had too much prosperity at his fingertips to be swayed by the notion that revolution would set them free. Middle class workers living a prosperous life are not going to unite in revolutionary fever to throw off the bourgeoise.

A significant number of Marxists thus began to rethink their Economic Marxism model concluding that their premise that man was Homo Economicus was inaccurate. These Marxist from the Frankfurt School, following Antonio Gramsci, began to posit that man was NOT Homo Economicus, but rather should be thought of as Homo Culturae — Man the Cultural being.

Do not miss the significance of this shift. This shift is monumental because in identifying man as being primarily a cultural being what is happening behind the curtain is that man is being identified as a primarily theological being since culture is properly defined as the outward manifestation of a distinct people’s inward beliefs. Culture is theology externalized. As such when the Frankfurt school identified man as being Homo Culturae, they hit the theological nail on the head. A form of Marxism had finally analyzed their problem correctly. The problem was not, sans the classical Marxists one of economics. The problem was one of culture/theology, and the Frankfurt school intended to change the culture/theology in order to arrive at the new Marxist Man.

Remember, Marxism was never ultimately about Economics. Marxism was about creating a new Marxist man, free of the chains that bound him societies that prevented him from reaching Utopia. Because this was true the Cultural Marxist began to abandon the Economic model of Marxism for the Cultural model of Marxism. And with this the Marxist guns were no longer primarily focused upon economic realities. Now the Marxist guns would set their sites on Western Culture with the goal, in Willi Munzenberg’s words “we must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western Culture stink.” This was all done with the end in view of fulfilling the long primary goal of Marxists; the creation of the new Utopian man.

Just as Classical Marxism sought to save the proletariat from their being alienated from their labor, so Cultural Marxism sought to save Western man from his culture.

The goal remained the same as previously. Liberate and change Western man from his Captialist/Christian overlords. The means now with Cultural Marxism and now WOKEism to liberate and change would be by means of attacking the culture just as Classical Marxism had attacked Capitalist economic models previously.

Some other changes would be made along the way vis-a-vis Cultural Marxism (WOKEism) and Classical Marxism. There was to be not only a new proletariat but also a new bourgeoise.

The new proletariat was needed because this Marxism was no longer focusing on Economics. Remember the focus now is on culture. As such the proletariat of classical Marxism found in the “worker class” is changed out for a proletariat that is comprised of the pervert, the feminist, the academician, and minorities. All of these subgroups fit perfectly for the Cultural Marxist proletariat because all of them could be manipulated into believing that they had been aggrieved by Western man and Western civilization. Every new proletariat then requires a new bourgeoisies and the new bourgeoisie; the new despised and hated class that must be overthrown became the White Anglo Saxon non-pervert, non feminist Christian. Just as nobody wanted to be identified as bourgeoise when the Bolshevik took over in Russia so in the midst of this new form of Marxism does anybody want to be left being identified as White Anglo Saxon Christian.

Because this is true the white race, a lack of perversion, and the embrace of biblical patriarchy are to WOKEism today what the bourgeoise was to the proletariat in days of yore. These are the enemy and they can in no way be allowed to be anything but the enemy. This is so true that new categories have had to be invented in order to lump people in to the new bourgeoise even if they don’t naturally fit. As such we now have phrases like “adjacent white” which is intended to paint, for example, a minority member Biblical Christian as part of the hated bourgeoise. This explains why people like Clarence Thomas, Jason Whitlock, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, and Jamie Castillo, Keon Garraway and others are accused of “acting white” or of being “Uncle Toms,” or of being “adjacent white.”

Now it is the rush to be not seen as White or adjacent white even that explains why many white people and white churches are in such a hurry to agree with the new cultural Marxist proletariat. When this Marxist music stops, trust me, you don’t want to be left without a chair to sit in. Doubt me? Just as the inhabitants of the Soviet gulags about their version of musical chairs. Today White churches are doing all they can to be seen as card carrying members of the new proletariat.

McAtee Contra Wilson On Flogging Baptists Who Subscribe to Baptist Theology

Doug Wilson wrote a piece entitled “That Time Virginia Flogged A Baptist,” and in that Piece Pope Doug I argues that it was wrong for the Virginia authorities to flog the Baptist. To which I reply… “Bologna.”

Why would it be wrong for God’s Magistrate to flog a person who was advocating that the public square, by consent of the laws and the Magistrates, should allow into the public square spokesmen of every God and every religion? Why is it wrong to flog somebody for teaching that the Magistrate must serve all gods in an “even-handed way” as opposed to serving the God of the Bible by not allowing advocates of other religions and gods into the public square?

Doug argues that according to Biblical standards it was wrong to flog. However, the Magistrate, Encrease Nowell, in the illustration that Wilson runs with his article (an illustration of a different Baptist being flogged roughly a century prior) told that Baptist (Obadiah Holmes) that he was being flogged because;

“ … it is for your error and going about to seduce the people,”

In this case the Magistrates were following God’s standard as expressed in the original Westminster Confession;

III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven:464 yet he has authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordainances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed.465

Wilson is just wrong in saying that it was wrong for the Virginian Magistrates a century later to flog yet another Baptist. In point of fact any religionist, like Pope Doug I who advocates the traditionally endarkenment line that the public square should be a place where all the gods are treated even-handedly should be flogged. That Baptist minister was advocating that Jesus Christ alone should not be prioritized in the public square and for that it was just, as according to God’s Word, for him to be flogged in the public square.

Look folks, the classical Liberalism that Wilson is championing is dead. It could prosper the way it did because the public square it created — a public square that was a safe place for all the gods — found the only gods in the 18th century in the American colonies being some kind of version of the Christian God being advocated. Even then though, Baptist thinking was creating a portal through which eventually other gods that were alien to Christianity would be treated in the same even handed manner. Because of Baptist theology the god of the Mormons, the god of Islam, the god of the Talmudists, the god of the Hindus are gods who are now free to walk in the public square.

Could it be that Magistrates in the 17th and 18th century understood the implications of Baptist Christianity better than Doug Wilson does today? Perhaps those Magistrates from long ago understood the danger of Baptist theology to the idea of a Christian Nation. Perhaps those Magistrates from long ago understood the danger that Baptist theology is to a distinctly Christian social order? I mean, if Roger Williams is sending a searing letter in defense of Obadiah Holmes orthodox Reformed people ought to reason that if Roger Williams is against the flogging of Obadiah Holmes that is a good reason to be for it.

It was because our Fathers didn’t keep flogging Baptist ministers in a good Christ honoring way that we are now in the place where Baptists officially champion the right of the followers of Allah to build a mosque by filing an Amicus Brief with the courts in Muslim group’s favor.

So, here’s a vote to keep flogging Baptists until they give up on the freedom of all religions to occupy the public square. This is not freedom at all for the Christian because it takes away the freedom of the Christian to have Jesus Christ alone named as King of the public square and forces Christians to abide with false gods claiming equality in sovereignty with the God of the Bible.

We are where we are in America because Roger Williams Baptist thinking won the day. Because of that we are on the edge of a time where only people who say that Jesus Christ is Lord of the public square are the ones who are now going to be flogged.

I wonder if Doug will put a good word in for us when that time comes?

Gottfried Insists that WOKEism Doesn’t Arise Out of Marxism … A Conversation Part IV

We have been seeing here that Paul Gottfried is just in error when he argues that Marx is not WOKE.

And frankly, no amount of egghead nuancing is going to save Gottfried from this error because as we have been seeing WOKE is Marx and there is nothing in WOKE that can’t be traced back to Marx in principle.

PG writes,

The end goal of wokeism is universal equality, which is to be brought about through a universal state. It opposes particularity, at least in the Western white world, and works to obliterate anything that is specifically Western.

Bret Responds,

And this also has been the goal of Marxism from jump.

1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

—Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
“The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination

5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”

K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,

As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

6.) “Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

Bret continues to respond to PG

So, in light of these quotes, how can Gottfried say that Marx was not WOKE? Marx is the father of WOKEism and WOKEism is the faithful child of Marx. Oh, sure, maybe WOKEism has a different hair style than its Father, and maybe it dresses slightly differently but underneath the cosmetics of WOKE is the leering ugliness of Karl Marx. Both WOKE and Marx are about having as their end goal universal equality brought about through a universal state. Both WOKE and Marx oppose particularity. Both WOKE and Marx work to obliterate anything that is specifically Western because both WOKE and Marx understood that that what was specifically Western was specifically Western because it was Christian and both WOKE and Marx intend to destroy Christianity.

PG writes,

Indeed, wokeism offers the example of a thoroughly unhinged left that Communist governments and parties, as well as the Cold War in the West, all kept in check. Wokeism privileges those with deviant sexual appetites, anti-Christian and antiwhite fixations, and repugnance for bourgeois institutions, groups whom the Communists quite properly kept from rising in their parties and governments. The Communists held generally traditional moral views even if they practiced tyranny.

Bret responds,

Note the implication here is that Communist government and parties were respectively conservative institutions when compared to the unhinged WOKE left. This is hilarious. Tell the scores of millions slaughtered by Communist governments and parties that they were slaughtered by a comparatively rightist institution. Honestly, one could make the case that it is WOKE that is comparatively right when compared to Communist governments and institutions since WOKE has only queered the world as opposed to the torture and slaughter that Marxism brought.

Secondly, however it is just not true that Marxism kept deviant sexual appetites in check as seen in the encouragement found in the Soviet Government for the loosening of morals between men and women so that adultery and illegitimate birth rates sky-rocketed with the initial burst of Marxist pride in Russia. (See previous reference to the work of Alexandra Kollontai). The only difference between WOKE and Marxist sexual deviance is that WOKE has just followed through with the Marxist sexual deviancy principles taking those principles to their logical conclusions.

Finally, this statement of PG must be the worst and most laughable sentence of the whole ridiculous piece;

“The Communists held generally traditional moral views even if they practiced tyranny.”

This is like saying that Madonna held generally traditional moral views even is she was an accomplished whore. It’s like saying that Timothy Leary held generally traditional moral views even if he dropped more acid than a classroom of clumsy freshmen in a Chemistry 101 class. It’s like saying that Satan held generally traditional moral views even if his goal was to overturn all traditional moral views.

How anyone can connect the idea of Communists and the idea of traditional moral views while conceding “even if they practiced tyranny” has to be one of the greatest gaslighting sentences written in the history of all mankind regardless of epoch, culture, or race.

PG writes,

Unfortunately, the post-war conservative movement became so obsessed with “fighting Communism” that it failed to notice the far more dangerous enemy gathering its forces domestically. And by the end phase of the Cold War in the 1980s, neoconservatives were frequently making the charge that Communist regimes discriminated against homosexuals. This charge was perfectly true because in comparison to leftward-drifting Western countries, Communist governments were, in some sense, more socially conservative.

Bret responds,

Here we find another knee-slapper. The post-war conservative movement fighting communism? Well, maybe with Sen. McCarthy but not so much after McCarthy’s diminishment and certainly not at all by the end phase of the Cold War. With the move of the Cultural Marxists into the America (Columbia University) with their fleeing of Germany upon the German pursuit of the Frankfurt school America embraced nascent WOKEism.

And as the neo-conservatives that PG complains about where themselves Marxists of the Trotskyite stripe it is not a wonder that the Marxist neo-con Trotskyites were complaining about their more staid classical Marxist brethren about the Communists discriminating against sodomites.

If Paul Gottfried wants to assert that Classical Marxism in comparison to Trotskyite Marxism is more socially conservative then so be it. However, I still find that to be a case where the sixth level of hell is being compared to the seventh level of hell and then concluding that the sixth level of hell is much more comfortable.